Question

I’m a beginner in mysql and I wanted to know if there is a faster way to do the following:

I have a table like this:

------------------------------
| Pages |      Creation      |
------------------------------
| bar   | 2012-10-10 10:11:10|
| blah  | 0000-00-00 00:00:00|
| foo   | 2012-10-10 10:10:10|
------------------------------

There is no primary key.

I want to know the page before and the page after a specific page (Ordered by date of creation).

Currently I do:

Sql: SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY creation

Php:

foreach($r as $c=>$t)
{
    if($t['pages']==$thepageiwant)
    {
        $before=$c-1;
        $after=$c+1;
        break;
    }
}

Answer 1

Previous page:

SELECT table.Pages
FROM table, (SELECT Creation FROM table WHERE Pages = "'.$page.'") AS t2
WHERE table.Creation < t2.Creation
ORDER BY  table.Creation DESC
LIMIT 1

Next page:

SELECT table.Pages
FROM table, (SELECT Creation FROM table WHERE Pages = "'.$page.'") AS t2
WHERE table.Creation > t2.Creation
ORDER BY  table.Creation ASC
LIMIT 1